Professor Saliha Belmessous

I research and teach the global history of empires. I am interested in the political and legal history of colonisation; the imperial experiences of colonised peoples; and the dynamics of cross-cultural encounters -- these are all issues that have an impact upon contemporary problems.

My current research reassesses how we think about international law. In my British Academy-funded project on 'Legal Encounters at the Origins of International Law', I want to shift the focus away from European theorists of international law, who are still the main object of scholarly study today, to the legal negotiations conducted by non-Europeans and Europeans in the Americas, Africa and the Pacific from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. I am interested in investigating whether the legal world in which non-European and European societies interacted was far more flexible and inclusive than what past jurists, and scholars studying them, have asserted.

Research Interests

• Global history of European empires
• History of dispossession and Indigenous rights
• The significance of diplomatic negotiations for European and non-European empires
• Indigenous petitioning